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The idea of a “dungeon crawler” goes back to the classic TTRPG experience. DM (Dungeon Master) would create maze-like levels for players to find enemies, traps and hopefully loot. This idea was replicated in the first video game RPGs that began the whole genre.
So are dungeon crawlers in video games like? Time to dive into it!
As mentioned above, the general idea was to give players combat environments to challenge the players and their characters. Rogues would deal with traps and locked doors, fighters would take the frontline, mages deal damage from afar etc.
The deeper the floor, the more powerful monsters and encounters would be introduced and of course, better loot and resources to find as well. This is a very popular design in video games, not just in RPGs, since it gives a very fulfilling sense of progression and challenge.
The early games also addressed the danger of such ventures, since the party goes deep into a hostile place full of monsters and virtually no friendly characters to offer assistance. The players were on their own with no convenient shopkeepers or ways to instantly return to safety.
Today, of course, the convenience of “town portal” or “warp” abilities to get back to the main city hub feels almost necessary. That doesn’t mean that there’s no more challenge within the dungeons anymore, far from it!
Exploration is a very important feature for many RPGs and dungeon crawlers. Heading into an unknown area filled with dangers, where most encounters can cause a game over screen can be quite nerve wracking. This is especially true in the early games and the ones that try to replicate that unsettling feeling of anxiety.
Each new area can contain traps, enemies or some events that affect the party in either positive or negative ways. It's a roll of a die whether the mystical runes permanently empower the party or simply turn their armor into dust. Whether the cute little rodent gives the character an item it found or maybe steals one instead.
The fun lies in discovering each new area and bearing the risks or rewards of each encounter.
Most party based games introduce characters that specialize in some way or the other. Whether it’s a frontliner to directly fight enemies and shield allies or a glass cannon mage ready to annihilate enemies before he gets targeted, each character plays a role and has relevant levelling up/equipment options to help fulfill it.
Some dungeon crawlers give plenty of options to either create multirole characters or hyperfocus them into a single aspect, further enhanced by powerful items, either found in the dungeon or purchased from a trusty vendor inside the safe hub.
The important part is having options to develop characters in any way the players want to and test out the builds in the field, where only the strong will survive and thrive.
The first dungeon crawler video games were mostly experimental and often didn’t have a proper balance. This ultimately caused them to be more of a challenge to complete, rather than pure entertainment.
Today more popular games with dungeon crawl mechanics are mostly forgiving but there are still plenty of games that try to mimic the harshness of the older titles.
Each time the party delves into the unknown, there’s a real chance of not coming back, losing all the progress from before a save game was made. Things can go pear shaped in a matter of moments, which helps to keep players on edge checking out their inventory for necessary supplies and potential danger, considering if now is the time to leave.
While it’s definitely not for everyone, it can be really fun to play some of the harder games in the genre from time to time just to check how they compare to more casual titles.
The party is running low on health, magic and supplies but they still haven’t found anything worthwhile. They're quite deep already but surely they’re bound to find something useful if they just go a little bit further, right…?
That’s a common story before reloading the previous save and it's not only the new players that have been humbled by overreaching. While it seems like an easy choice to simply go back when things get a little bit dicy, around the corner there could be a checkpoint/teleport that allows the party to quickly travel around after activating it.
Or there could be a time-sensitive quest that requires finding something now or losing it forever, putting the highly valuable reward at risk, which could help the party in every future expedition.
So maybe a little gamble isn’t really a bad idea after all?
There’s a large variety of dungeon crawlers to choose from today so here’s a few to give a general idea of what they can offer to the player.
A very successful first person dungeon crawler series first released in 1980-1981 by Sir-Tech, with the last title in the original series, Wizardry 8, being released in 2001.
Its main inspiration was the Dungeon and Dragons TTRPG and other already existing dungeon crawlers. The first games were very simple text based games with super basic graphics that resembled objects/items/creatures.
Funnily enough, the game has a lot more spin-off games made in Japan than the original series did, with new titles still being released today.
Wizardry series along with Ultima series both had a massive influence on video game RPGs, with Wizardry focusing a lot more on the dungeon crawling and combat aspects. Its popularity in Japan inspired a huge amount of games and even JRPGs as a whole.
For anyone willing to start their journey into the series, it might be daunting to play the older games. Luckily there’s a remake of the first one called “Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord” and should allow new players to experience the classic with modern take on it.
Etrian Odyssey is a JRPG dungeon crawler and it is no secret that it had plenty of influence from the Wizardry. First person party exploration with interactable environments and growing difficulty as the players delve deeper (or higher) into the labyrinth/dungeon.
One of the core features is the mapping system that requires players to manually map the dungeon or risk being lost without anything to navigate. The remakes and later titles have an optional automapping mode to give players a choice, whether they wish to manually fill up the map or let the game fill up the basic outlay.
Another interesting feature is the roaming F.O.E. (Field On Enemy in Japan) which are powerful enemies that can rival bosses, while also having an ability to move around the dungeon, either in a pattern or chasing the party. To the degree that they can join a fight the player is engaging in currently (yes, even the boss battles.).
Plenty of classes to choose from and specialize into their roles to then explore increasingly difficult floors makes each game real fun and interesting. Even though the game can be quite hard, there’s a choice to lower/increase difficulty when visiting town in the options.
All in all, the series is definitely worth checking out, especially the HD remakes as they offer plenty of quality of life improvements over the original.
While the Diablo as a series doesn’t really need much introduction, Diablo 1 is often overlooked due how popular its sequel, Diablo 2 was. The first game was a mix of action RPG, roguelike and dungeon crawler. Each level was randomly generated, the enemy variety could be different on each floor, along with varied loot found and items sold by the town vendors.
While not a pure dungeon crawler by any means, it definitely has features of one. An increasingly difficult maze-like area filled with enemies/traps and loot with 3 (or 6 with Hellfire expansion and some game-file sorcery) different characters archetypes to explore, with permadeath unless a save state exists. But instead of a party of adventurers, there’s only one protagonist and combat happens in real time, which made Diablo 1 a rather unique game in itself at the time of its release.
Despite being nearly 30 years old, it’s still a very solid game, plus there are mods that can add more flavour and options made by the fan community. All in all it's definitely worth checking out for the atmosphere alone, it’s hard to describe just how well everything works together. The setting, unsettling feeling of being trapped, grim dark themes, music, sound design, visuals, it just all clicks together.
A spin-off of the Shin Megami Tensei and developed by Atlus (also the developers of Etrian Odyssey) with the latest Persona 5 Royal being quite a worldwide hit.
The series is focused around the concept of “Personas”, a powerful physical projection of users' deep subconsciousness, represented by a (mostly) humanoid like beings with each game having characters manifesting them in a different and meaningful way.
Furthermore each game uses different themes for each persona, such as mythology or famous outlaws and thieves. There’s plenty of depth and thought put into its visuals, sound design and overall feeling of the game.
Persona isn’t a pure dungeon crawler by any means, it’s a mix of visual novel, social game (starting from Persona 3 and continuing onwards) and dungeon crawler. While each individual part can be very enjoyable on its own, it's how all those parts were combined together into one that makes the series as enjoyable as it is.
The combat takes place in a dungeon-like area, where players explore each area to interact with the objectives, fight enemies to power up, find new personas, get resources etc. It’s a very satisfying gameplay loop with plenty of customization for each character via their Personas and gear.
On top of everything, each game (Persona 3 and onwards) has a standalone story that is really fun to be part of. It’s not unusual for dungeon crawlers to sacrifice the story almost completely, differentiating it from classic dungeon crawler games further.
The most recent Persona 5 Royal is considered to be the best one in the franchise so far and it’s also a great starting point for potential newcomers. It’s definitely a high recommendation for both dungeon crawler fans and JRPG fans alike.
While the “pure” dungeon crawlers aren’t very popular, some games, like Persona 5 Royal, employ a lot of dungeon crawling aspects within it and managed to achieve great success.
Some of the dungeon crawler series, like Etrian Odyssey or Wizardy were designed to challenge players. Not all of them are hard though and even the hard ones have difficult sliders to make’em more accessible.
Depending on what your definition of what dungeon crawler is, it could be either Diablo or Persona series.
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